Shattered Diamond
by PlagueBard
Summary: Hideyoshi Higashikata is, by all accounts, a normal teenager. He just can't shake the feeling that something is wrong with his very existence.
1. Teen Idle

There were a lot of things Hideyoshi hated about himself. His almost complete inability to stand up for himself, his extremely rocky relationship with his father, the fact that his first response to almost anything was to start crying, the list went on and he usually just summarized it as "everything." He often found himself thinking about everything wrong with himself, and, letting this consume him, found himself to be thoroughly unlikable.

When taking this into account, he wasn't terribly surprised that nobody his age would willingly interact with him, some even going out of their way to avoid him entirely. And so it was that he once again found himself walking home alone on this particularly cloudy day, the clouds in question beginning to give way to a light rain.

The quiet loneliness of his walks home usually gave Hideyoshi time to think about a lot of things, whether he liked it or not. Today was particularly bad, as it had been marked with the disappearance of one of his classmates. It wasn't anyone he knew personally (though, Hideyoshi supposed, he didn't know anyone he went to school with personally), but it was at least someone he recognized; a shorter boy who, like Hideyoshi, seemed shy and quiet, and, unlike him, people seemed to like well enough. There had been rumors going around all day about why exactly he disappeared, ranging from the possibility of it being gang related, to the idea that there was a killer somewhere in Morioh. Hideyoshi didn't know and, trying to quell his rising anxiety, tried to convince himself he didn't care. He tried to reason with himself that people go missing all the time, and more often than not, turn up just fine. This reasoning ceased to work when he remembered that he lived in a town with a disappearance rate much higher than the national average. Feeling blood starting to drip down his chin from the lip he had been chewing on, he quickly tried to occupy his mind with something else.

He had settled on letting his mind wander off completely while his body made the rest of the walk home uninterrupted. By the time he had made it inside, the weather had gone from a shower to a much heavier rainfall. On this level, Hideyoshi was kind of glad he had, at some point, increased his walking pace. He didn't want to have to deal with wet clothes or hair, especially when he was in one of his more negative moods. He had also noticed that he was currently the only person in the house, and took this an an opportunity to try to sleep off at least some of his stress. He didn't really count on it working, though. Something would likely come and make it far worse than it already was, sooner or later. He was sure of that.

Luck had, after all, never sided with Hideyoshi Higashikata.


	2. Hopeless Bleak Despair

At some point in his life, Hideyoshi had found it incredibly difficult to drag himself out of bed. This problem has persisted for the past couple of years, and would likely never really come to an end, as far as he cared. The only thing that had been preventing him from not getting up at all was fear of consequences. If he didn't get out of bed, he couldn't go to school, and if he didn't go to school, he wouldn't graduate, and if he didn't graduate, he wouldn't be able to get a job and-

Hideyoshi forced himself to get out of bed and stumble his way into the bathroom. At least then he could say he did something before he had a breakdown, if things kept going that way this morning. He showered, brushed his teeth, looked in the mirror, and sighed.

He never understood why he looked the way he did. Neither of his parents had blond hair or blue eyes. His uncle did though, and his father usually would answer his questions about this with something about recessive genes, yes I really am your father, yes he'll tell you the same thing, Punnett squares are grossly oversimplified but they're not going to teach you that in high school. Hideyoshi would quietly laugh about that to himself sometimes. It was one of the rare occasions his father seemed human, as opposed to whatever awful thing he could theorize him to actually be.

He was dressed in his uniform and out the door after he finished styling his hair. He wore both like a delinquent (a fact he was made aware of many times), with his jacket open and his hair in a pompadour, but he liked feeling like he was doing something. That he actually had control over something. He had so little control over any aspect of his life anymore. (He stopped on this thought for a while and mused that he never had any control in the first place. Arguably, this was really the only form of control he ever had, now that he thought of it.)

The weather was noticeably better today than it had been for the past week, and for once Hideyoshi's mood was doing the same. Instead of a completely numb state, he was only in a mostly numb state. Thus, the day would go by as a slightly less detached series of events than they usually did.

Hideyoshi wasn't particularly aware of anything today even with this in mind up until his literature class. This was mostly because it had been decided at the beginning of the semester that the class would be split into groups of three to do work together. As such Hideyoshi had to pay attention to the other two group members. (Which honestly wasn't very hard. He thought they were both very strange.) The group consisted of himself (which already meant it was a bad time), Yukako Yamagishi (whom Hideyoshi was terrified of, and was probably one of the people who took that recent disappearance the worst), and Mikitaka Hazekura (who, as far as Hideyoshi could tell, was nice, but something about him just didn't seem right). This made for a rather odd group, and their choice of book didn't help. They were currently doing work based around No Longer Human, which had actually been Hideyoshi's idea. Part of him regretted that decision, but another part felt as though if he could get into the narrator's head and analyze the plot he could find some way to help himself. If not that he could just use his usually poor emotional state to have an easier time understanding what was happening and not have to worry about working as much.

"-so we're going to have to find somewhere to work on it then." Hideyoshi was jolted back into reality by the sound of Yukako's voice. Judging by that last fragment, she had been talking about their current project, which they were behind on. She had probably been saying something about getting part of it done over the weekend in order to catch up. "If it's at someone's house, it's either going to be mine or Hideyoshi's." She was looking at him now and he didn't know what to do. He considered telling her that his house wouldn't be a good idea. He could probably come up with something about how his father didn't like people coming over, but when he thought about it, he could potentially make an exception for a school project. Hideyoshi had a hard enough time figuring out what his father was thinking of most of the time. Would he do something to actively work against him in a school context? Hideyoshi knew he didn't like him but he didn't think he would intentionally set him up for failure and-

"Hey, Hide, you're listening, right?"

"Oh, I- uh- yeah I'm- I'm listening, yeah," Hideyoshi managed to stutter out a response, which was more than he expected to be able to do. Yukako's general disposition reminded him of his father, and garnered similar responses from him. "Um... I mean, we could probably work at my house, yeah... My parents are- they're probably okay with it.

It was a satisfying enough response, and so they planned to meet up the next day in the afternoon, and the rest of the school day went. Hideyoshi was mentally kicking himself for what he said the rest of the day. Was it really that hard to say "no?" He could have suggested they work at Yukako's house instead, she had said it was an option too. He was sure it would have been a better idea. Though, he reasoned, if the two of them were over, his father wouldn't antagonize them, right? He could tell him they were coming anyway, he was almost home, sure his father wouldn't actively help him, but he also wouldn't actively prevent somebody else from working on something just because Hideyoshi was involved, right?

Someone who had been walking the same direction on the sidewalk across the street had been watching him. Hideyoshi could feel their eyes on him, and got a quick look at them. Someone with a weird headband and clothes that gave off the vibe of "I can dress this way because I make absurd amounts of money, you wouldn't understand fashion anyway." Hideyoshi gave them an awkward half-wave and quickened his pace for the rest of the walk home.


	3. Depression of the Young Literati

Rohan Kishibe considered himself a lot of things. The greatest artist in the world was a given. He earned and deserved that title. The universe could destroy and reform itself and he would still deserve it. Whether this was a theoretical statement or literal was debatable, even to him. (If the universe was destroyed and remade would anyone know anyway?) He was also pretty sure he was the only sensible person in Morioh. This was quite an accomplishment, considering his habit of going out of his way to do strange things. In retrospect, this was probably only because of the nature of the town. Anywhere else he probably wouldn't be able to see himself this way, and other people could probably argue that Rohan wasn't, in fact, able to fit this criteria.

And in being both of these, he was used to having no assistants. He could do everything himself, and honestly at that point wouldn't it be a sign that he was becoming worse if he needed help? Right?

Right…

So it was now, on the third hour of laying in bed and staring at the ceiling, that Rohan considered maybe looking for an assistant. After finally managing to at least sit up, he summoned Heaven's Door. The small stand looked at its user and gave a slight smile. The smile went away when Rohan didn't return one. Which wasn't really anything new. Good days were fewer and more far between than ever. His legs had pretty much given out on him at this point, and his hands had gotten shakier in the past month. This brought his attention back to what he was thinking about.

An assistant, right, right. Something he had never needed (truthfully, it had been more that he refused help, whether or not he did need it) in his career as a mangaka. Where was he even supposed to find one, anyway? Rohan frustratedly put his face in his hands, wincing from the pain positioning himself like that put him in. He was approaching multiple deadlines, for both his work and the constant persistent feeling that something was supposed to have happened by now. Something, something, SOMETHING needed to happen by now. It HAD to. Any day, SOMEONE would show up looking for him, and he was almost begging for it to happen at this point.

"Almost" still being the key word. He had definitely been enjoying the quiet that this situation had given him. The bigger problem was, naturally, the person who had put him in said situation. And given that nobody had shown up yet, he was starting to feel like more had happened than he had been able to tell.

So, he had to get an assistant. Aside from the obvious issues he was having that could definitely be a good part of why he was going to get an assistant, Rohan needed someone to help him find Kira. They would be looking for him earlier this time too, and there was also the advantage of knowing who he was and what he looked like, whether he had his old face or the second one. Even if it didn't end up being the same people, Morioh was a hotbed for stand users. That could even be an advantage, Rohan had thought as he started having his stand write the job offer. If he remembered what had happened, what was stopping Kira from remembering too?

Rohan shuddered thinking about that. Kira definitely remembered. Even though it had technically been years since it happened, he knew that Kira had remembered. He had a sinking dread in him that told him exactly why nobody he had known had shown up yet.

He pushed the feeling down, and had Heaven's Door finish writing the offer.


End file.
